Spam Control

This online spam control service has been developed to assist WPI e-mail
users to filter SPAM by taking full advantage of the new spam marking feature
now available on our e-mail server. Use
this web page to define settings for controlling SPAM that is normally
delivered to your WPI e-mail account.

It can white list addresses so that they are forwarded to
your inbox, despite blacklist or spam probability.

It can black list messages so that they are not forwarded
to your inbox.

It can block messages which exceed your tolerance threshold of spam probability.

It can apply an indicator of spam probability to the subject header of the mail, so that the spam rating is visible.

Set a vacation message. Note that if you are only setting a vacation message and not using
any spam control features, please use this simpler vacation setting procedure.

A black list is made for messages you do not want to
see. A white list is checked before the black list, for
special messages you do not want blocked. e.g. you might black
listaol.com, so you would never see a message from there, but
you might white listmom@aol.com so that you can get your
mother's email.

Filtering with your own programming

If you want to deal with the filtering on your own, you can choose
your own filter software and program it to look for the spam
probability marking.

The PureMessage spam marking software inserts a header with its
estimate of the probability that a message might be spam. You will not
find this header in all messages; only messages which begin to raise a
suspicion are marked. The header is X-Perlmx-Spam and the
first entry in the header is a Gauge of the spam probability. This
Gauge field should be easy to handle with any filter program. The
Gauge value is in a simplified roman numeral form, with leading X's
for tens and trailing I's for ones. e.g. a Probability of 77% is
represented by the pattern Gauge=XXXXXXXIIIIIII. This roman
numeral form avoids V and L, which would complicate pattern
matching.

It is easy to differentiate spam at any 10% amount, but probably
not worth the effort of differentiating at an "odd" amount. e.g. a
probability over 73% could be differentiated by the pattern
Gauge=XXXXXXXX (any probability 80 or over) or the pattern
Gauge=XXXXXXXIII (any probability 73 through 79). i.e. the
application of two rules would be needed to specify the fine-grained
73% probability.

If your filter software can deal with a decimal number, the next
field in the X-Perlmx-Spam header is a numeric probability
display, e.g. Probability=77%.

Both the Gauge and Probability entries are followed
by a comma. You should observe some X-Perlmx-Spam headers, to
be sure you understand the form, before you install your rules.

Helpdesk has developed descriptions for setting local filtering on a few platforms: